Facebook has settled a suit that could have seen it compensating 150 million people in the United States.
Facebook will pay out $10m to charity to settle a class action lawsuit that challenged the social network for using punters' mugshots in adverts.
The case was settled on Friday, 15 June, and Facebook have agreed to pay out …

Google+ will allow that. It's such a shame they launched so late in the game that people are too attached to Farcebook to change or are against it for not being Facebore / another social network / Google.

The guy wants to avoid dodgy advertising practices and you suggest he move to the social network of the internet's biggest advertising company? It's very naive to think Google won't be doing exactly the same thing once they've gained enough market share.

sharing alternative?

The question is there a good alternative for those of use who want to share pictures/updates with our friends? and JUST our friends?

I've always believed that there isn't anything you can do with Farcebook that can't be done with a properly-maintained listserv or simple cc: list -- or, perhaps, an invitation-only blog -- with the added benefit of not having to deal with Mark Fuckerberg.

There were pie-in-the-sky plans for an open source peer-to-peer alternative, but it was still working on security bugs, last I heard. Unfortunately, Facebook's USP is its ubiquity; imagine being at a party and a girl asks if you are on Facebook, and you reply "Nah, I'm a geek so I use Diaspora. Let me tell you about it..." Even Orkut is only good for keeping in touch with Brazilian acquaintances.

Facebook has critical mass, and most of the people I know on it aren't likely to adopt a peer-to-peer system- indeed, many now access it from a phone.

It would be a lovely thing indeed for just the core useful functionality of FB (group messaging for event invitations, photo-sharing, sending your telephone number to a friend of a friend you were chatting to the night before) to be available without the creepy stuff. The work involved in creating its infrastructure is tiny compared to the billions FB has been valued at, and the only reason people visit it is to see words, pictures and music their own friends have created.

A law forcing FB to allow data to be exported from it would be very welcome, but I don't see it happening.

@Fibbles

Actually he asked where he could share photos to a strict set of people, I gave a suggestion that allows that. I make no claims to know what Google plan if it ever becomes more widespread than it is currently and I rarely use it myself.

I smell conspiracy - the last time I made a comment on an error like the 150 billion in this article, my comment was deleted by the mods, so this time I was a good little boy, and submitted a correction through the appropriate channels. Now it seems I needn't have bothered. Why is everybody always picking on me?

If you go on Facebook...

Another game of percentages..

The game that both Google and Facebook are playing is that of numbers.

What *really* should happen is that they are made to pay per individual violation, because exposing the details of an individual doesn't have a lesser impact if it happens to more people. However, because that would finish the companies (and, presumably, the associated juicy campaign contributions and lobbying) the correct charges are turned into something that can be paid out of petty cash.

The whole business model they are running is flat out ignoring the law, and they say "oops, sorry" when they're caught out - at which point the number trick follows. In other words, there is absolutely no incentive for these organisations to ever go even *close* to actual compliance, ever. Let's just screw over the populations' rights chasing the almighty buck.

The brutal irony in this is that the executives of the organisations are very, very shy of the disclosure they demand of others themselves (government organisations display the same attitudes). I makes you wonder what they have to hide..